This week, Saskatchewan’s provincial government released a mid-year fiscal update — timed perfectly to avoid having to answer for its contents in the legislature. And there’s plenty for the Saskatchewan Party to answer for: all the accounting trickery and Crown profit-stripping the Wall government can muster still falls short of papering over the fact that our province is running a nine-figure deficit.

That said, Saskatchewan’s deteriorating fiscal situation didn’t come about in a vacuum.

Part of the new flow of red ink comes from the direct impact of reduced resource royalties, and the Saskatchewan Party has tried to label that as the only issue worth noticing. But the deficit also reflects overall economic weakness that is being felt by citizens across the province.

Our GDP is projected by outside forecasters to decline for the first time since 2009 — though the update reflects continued denial that our economy as a whole is headed in the wrong direction. Indicators ranging from trade to investment to retail sales to housing prices are deteriorating, signalling that the Wall government’s attempt to get us to clap louder to cover up the sound of impending danger isn’t convincing anybody. And most importantly, Saskatchewan’s unemployment rate is up by over half since just last year.

We should be asking why our provincial government refuses to notice or address the even larger problems behind the bad-news budget numbers. And that goes doubly since the knee-jerk response of the Saskatchewan Party and some commentators has been to insist on punishing residents for the sins of their government in failing to manage the budget responsibly when it had money to burn.

The mid-year update positively brags that the Wall government has exacerbated our economic uncertainty by slashing budgeted services. But that only means the provincial government has directly contributed to our broader economic difficulties, rather than serving its proper role as an economic stabilizer.

It’s plainly counterproductive to respond to softening economic conditions by piling on with ill-advised cuts that only further depress our economy and quality of life alike — both by taking needed services away from citizens and eliminating the positions that might otherwise offer some opportunity for people confronted with a layoff notice.

But that’s exactly what the Saskatchewan Party has done. And what’s worse, the Wall government is depending on the same factors that have turned against our province as its only hope to turn anything around.

A global plunge in oil prices can be linked to increased production and stockpiles emanating from competitors around the world, meaning there’s no reason to think matters will improve any time soon. And even the data relied on by the government doesn’t portend any systemic economic recovery that would ameliorate markets for our other exports. Yet those are exactly the factors presented as excuses for this year’s drop-off — and as reasons to pretend matters will get better in 2016.

With the present looking as grim as it does, the Saskatchewan Party’s other option is to live in the past. And the update does that, too, at every opportunity, pointing to previous years’ numbers in an effort to distract from the uncertainty we’re facing today.

But that distraction should only remind us that Brad Wall squandered the opportunity to insulate us against a predictable bust in resource prices. And because the Saskatchewan Party’s pattern of hemorrhaging money when flush and slashing in lean times signals a refusal to learn even the first lesson about managing an economic cycle, the best fiscal and economic news we could ask for might be a change in government.

Fingas is a Regina lawyer, blogger and freelance political commentator who has written about provincial and national issues from a progressive NDP perspective since 2005. His column appears every Thursday. You can read more from Fingas at http://www.gregfingas.com

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